Coinbase Offers OTC ‘On-Ramp’ for Institutional Investors

Institutional investors now have an “on-ramp” to trade cryptocurrencies over the counter thanks to the Coinbase cryptocurrency exchange. That means institutional investors will now be able to conduct direct trades between each other.

“We launched our OTC business as a complement to our exchange business because we found a lot of institutions were using OTC as an on-ramp for crypto trading,” Christine Sandler, head of sales at Coinbase, told Cheddar. “We felt this was a huge benefit to our clients to actually leverage both our exchange and our OTC business.”

Sandler said the company plans to expand the service offering to include delayed settlement and will potentially integrate it with Coinbase Custody, its platform for hedge funds, exchanges and ICO teams that launched this past July.

Back in April Coinbase said it was talking to the Securities and Exchange Commission about registering as an electronic-trading venue and becoming a licensed brokerage firm. Those talks intensified in June after the exchange bought broker-dealer Keystone Capital. Read more here.